"You don't have to suffer to be a poet. Adolescence is enough suffering for anyone."
~John Ciardi

Ode:

My quiet, calm, sometimes odious best friend,
You gimme that look you know how to work me,
You need the treat, want the walk,
You open doors better than most thieves,
On occasion you close them too,
Chase that ball til you need aspirin to walk,
32 and snowy or 98 and sunny your chasin’ that stick knee high in water,
Sleeps more than my granpa,
More social that most of the kids in this school,
That sleek, shiny, black fur…on more of my clothes then yours,
Sit before we tell you to,
Lay down before we even think of it,
More loyal than a Marine,
Wag that tail, Lick those lips, my ole girl lets hope you don’t get ticks.

Sonnet:

Her fur so sleek so soft my dog so black
so sweet she is beautiful thats my dog
Wagging your tail when begging for her snack
right after the food is served your a hog

how you chase your stick til your feet are beat
sleep all day wake up when I walk inside
all summer you lay and bask in the heat
the second you hear thunder you go hide

We got you when I was five now I am
Fifteen and you are ten not much time left
Always run and hide when I begin to jam.
We are safe because you’re an antitheft.

Not much time left lets make the most of it
Just ignore us whenever we holler sit.

Memory Poem:

It came flying at me as if it were destined,
it landed and my teeth crashed into one another and right out of my mouth.
My lip through my bottom row of teeth,
the blood flows out of the cut does a little dance with my taste buds.
My body slowly falls to the floor,
my wrist cracks when it lands first,
next my head crashes into the hard concrete...
...it all goes black.

My Writing Process

My writing process for the poetry was to write exactly how I felt about the first topic to pop into my head, the later fix it up and make it fit the form or design of the poems. This proved to be a struggle, but also proved to be very easy at the same time, because it is easy to write a page of feelings then fix it and make it fit a Shakespearean sonnet format because I attempted to write it down in the format before I had my thoughts complete and it came out incomprehendable and nonsensical which is not what you want a poem about your dog to be like. Also when I was writing I would listen to certain music that I can kind of space out to so that I’m not in my own head going crazy about what works and what doesn’t because as long as I’m thinking about what I’m writing it will come out less than par and seem too jumbled and scrambled.

****The road not taken****
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
 
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
 
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
 
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
 

The Road Not Taken Analysis

Many times when reading a piece written by Robert Frost the poems seem like a not so subtle metaphor for life. In this poem he is discussing the differences between the two. In many of his other poems they are slightly less obvious. In this specific one he is talking about the difference between two choices, which he compares to road. The comparison is slightly cliché because there is a quote “Take the high road” which is talking about taking the less traveled road or the road that is more difficult because you would have to climb to get to that road.

Carpe Diem

Age saw two quiet children
Go loving by at twilight,
He knew not whether homeward,
Or outward from the village,
Or (chimes were ringing) churchward,
He waited (they were strangers)
Till they were out of hearing
To bid them both be happy.
"Be happy, happy, happy,
And seize the day of pleasure."
The age-long theme is Age's.
'Twas Age imposed on poems
Their gather-roses burden
To warn against the danger
That overtaken lovers
From being overflooded
With happiness should have it.
And yet not know they have it.
But bid life seize the present?
It lives less in the present
Than in the future always,
And less in both together
Than in the past. The present
Is too much for the senses,
Too crowding, too confusing—
Too present to imagine.

Carpe Diem Analysis
In the poem Carpe Diem, Robert Frost is talking about a couple he sees in love and how he wishes for them to be happy and live in the present. The title of the poem “Carpe Diem” is Latin for “seize the day” which gives away the meaning of this poem. Robert Frost was trying to tell people to live for the now, tomorrow you could die and will not have lived your life to the fullest. However in the world we live in now, it is more difficult to do because we have become accustomed to not living life to the fullest, which results in the couples falling back into the past and waiting for the future.

Mending Wall
Something there is that doesn't love a wall, That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it, And spills the upper boulders in the sun; And makes gaps even two can pass abreast. The work of hunters is another thing: I have come after them and made repair Where they have left not one stone on a stone, But they would have the rabbit out of hiding, To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean, No one has seen them made or heard them made, But at spring mending-time we find them there. I let my neighbor know beyond the hill; And on a day we meet to walk the line And set the wall between us once again. We keep the wall between us as we go. To each the boulders that have fallen to each. And some are loaves and some so nearly balls We have to use a spell to make them balance: 'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!' We wear our fingers rough with handling them. Oh, just another kind of outdoor game, One on a side. It comes to little more: There where it is we do not need the wall: He is all pine and I am apple orchard. My apple trees will never get across And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him. He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors.' Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder If I could put a notion in his head: '//Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it Where there are cows? But here there are no cows. Before I built a wall I'd ask to know What I was walling in or walling out, And to whom I was like to give offense. Something there is that doesn't love a wall, That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him, But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather He said it for himself. I see him there Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed. He moves in darkness as it seems to me, Not of woods only and the shade of trees. He will not go behind his father's saying, And he likes having thought of it so well He says again, 'Good fences make good neighbors.'

Mending Wall Analysis
The poem Mending wall is talking about how people become friends with people who bounce back the same ideas that they throw out. Rather than being friends with his neighbor and seeing life differently, they build the wall up and continue to keep it up so they can be suffocated by their own ignorance of others. The part when Frost talks about building walls back up, that is a metaphor meaning people enjoy living in ignorance of others, because it makes them feel correct and better than others. Then the final line “Good fences make good neighbors” is saying if you don’t have to interact with your neighbors but can instead live alone or with people that are the same as you, you will always be happy but never get the pleasure of knowing the world.